04/04/2025
Repost from the Yurok Tribe | More than 100,000 coho salmon fry are being introduced to tributaries of the Trinity River in a collaborative effort between the Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribes.
In the first program of its kind in the basin, fisheries crews are transporting coho fry from the Hoopa Valley Conservation Hatchery and Trinity River Hatchery to natal streams in the Trinity River watershed.
The fry were raised by the Hoopa Valley Tribal Fisheries Department and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “We are putting salmon in these streams because they have good rearing habitat,” says Yurok Fisheries Biologist Zac Reinstein.
Coho restoration is important because the fish are an indicator or keystone species. The Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast (SONCC) coho salmon are listed as threatened. Off-site fry releases are hoped to increase the Coho salmon population within the Klamath Basin.
In late February, Hoopa Valley Tribe Fisheries released approximately 35,000 coho fry in lower Pine, Supply and Soctish creeks in the Hoopa Valley Reservation.
The following week, a joint Yurok Tribe-Hoopa Valley Tribe Fisheries crew completed the first upper Trinity round of releases in Indian Creek, Browns Creek and Weaver Creek. The day began at the Hoopa Hatchery, where Yurok and Hoopa crews carefully loaded approximately 50,000 coho fry into a 350-gallon tank installed on the back of a pickup truck.
Reinstein and Yurok Tribe Fisheries Biologist Emmanuel Cyr, and Yurok Fisheries Technicians Blaze Carpenter and Jeremy Alameda, along with Hoopa Fisheries Biologist Lu-Ting Wu then began the transport upriver, stopping frequently to check on fish health and monitor the water temperature. At the hatchery, fish were kept at around 12 degrees Celsius, Reinstein explained, but temperatures of the creeks were closer to 8 degrees. To acclimate them to colder temperatures without increasing stress and mortality, the team methodically added ice to the tank over the course of the day.
The team’s first release site was on Indian Creek, on the downstream end of a restoration project recently completed by Yurok Construction Corps.
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